Less than three years after acquiring travel search startup Hipmunk, SAP Concur has announced that it will shutter both the consumer- and corporate-facing operations of the platform. Reports in PhocusWire on Tuesday (Jan. 14) said that SAP Concur notified Hipmunk employees that morning. Current Hipmunk employees will be moved to other areas of SAP Concur, the company noted.
“As our approach to providing integrated travel and expense [T&E] management evolves, we have made the decision to retire Hipmunk and Concur Hipmunk,” the company said in a statement, referring to the consumer-facing travel search and price comparison site Hipmunk, and the corporate travel expense management platform Concur Hipmunk. “Concur TripLink with TripIt Pro is the preferred solution for customers who aren’t a fit for Concur Travel, an online booking tool.”
The company also told the publication that it “carefully considered all potential avenues for Hipmunk and Concur Hipmunk, and determined that it was in the best interests of our travelers, customers, our people and SAP Concur to terminate the service and retain all of the intellectual property.”
Separate reports in Skift on the same day said that SAP Concur rebuffed a buy-back offer from Hipmunk’s founders, Adam Goldstein and Steve Huffman. An unnamed source told the publication that Concur confirmed it would not consider offers for someone else acquiring Hipmunk assets.
Goldstein reportedly left the company last year. Huffman is currently CEO of Reddit.
The shuttering of Hipmunk follows last September’s announcement that SAP Concur would be collaborating with Thomas Cook to expand its corporate T&E operations in India. The firms will partner for joint business clients to integrate travel and expense management — as well as invoice management — solutions to support enterprise digitization and streamlined spend management.
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